Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Americans for Contraception unveiled a 20-foot inflatable IUD outside Union Station in Washington on June 5, 2024, the day the Right to Contraception Act was under consideration in the U.S. Senate.
Nothing puts the “old” in the Grand Old Party like an unhealthy obsession with returning to premodern attitudes about birth control and methods of contraception. Which is essentially what the Senate GOP winked at when they voted not to advance the Right to Contraception Act last Wednesday. The measure sought to “protect an individual’s ability to make decisions about their body, medical care, family, and life’s course, and thereby protect the individual’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States.”
“Birth control,” the AFL-CIO tweeted on the day of the vote, “is essential to workers’ economic security.”
Sidestepping the link between fertility control and economic security in 2024 to blame Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for playing politics did not erase the many “Senate Republicans block bill to protect access to contraception” headlines—or the message sent by the sight of a huge inflatable IUD within view of the U.S. Capitol.
One the one hand, Republican aims regarding birth control were clear. On the other, so oblique were the party’s political calculations that when Fox News host Bret Baier asked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), “Why vote nay, and explain how that’s not a bad issue for Republicans?” he ignored the question, pivoted to abortion, and finally offered the weak tea that Republicans would “give wide access to everything that today is already available.”
When talking about Republican reproductive prohibitions, today is not the issue, it’s the day after. The Americans who did not think that Republicans would ever come for Roe v. Wade, despite Republicans repeating for decades that Roe had to go, are still shell-shocked. The Senate vote on contraception is another ignore-what-they-say, watch-what-they-do moment.
The cortege of women who have suffered gruesome miscarriages or have fled Texas or one of the 13 other states that have banned abortion to secure one is a preview of where birth control restrictions are headed if Republicans capture Congress and the White House. Texas, predictably, is ground zero for the maltreatment of women with pregnancy complications and the medical professionals who try to treat them.
At the end of May, the Texas Supreme Court rejected the opportunity to make plain the legal landscape for doctors in Zurawski v. State of Texas. In their unanimous ruling, the justices explained that “A physician who tells a patient, ‘Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,’ and in the same breath states ‘but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances’ is simply wrong in that legal assessment.”
Voters have yet to pick up on how birth control access might be restricted.
The court, however, failed to provide doctors with the detailed medical or legal guidance they need to make decisions that do not run afoul of Texas’s abortion laws. Rather than assume the dangerous burden of trying to sort out the possible criminal consequences, doctors and hospitals in Texas will likely continue to avoid these medically complex cases.
Birth control prohibitions could easily produce similar circumstances. Oral contraceptives (which are now available without a prescription) have uses for other conditions including heavy or painful periods, acne, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), menstrual migraine, and certain cancer risks. Would doctors decline to prescribe birth control pills for people in their child-bearing years for these conditions if access to contraceptives were suddenly restricted?
Unlike abortion, moral objections do not factor into birth control decisions for the vast majority of Americans. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 92 percent of respondents view birth control as morally acceptable. In turning their attention to birth control, however, Republicans have asserted that IUDs and emergency contraceptives are tantamount to abortion, disinformation that further clouds these issues for those Americans already operating at a deficit when it comes to female physiology and sex education.
Voters have yet to pick up on how birth control access might be restricted. A March KFF Health Tracking Poll found that 45 percent of adults polled believe that access to birth control was “a secure right likely to remain in place”; only 21 percent believe the right is at risk; another 34 percent are unsure. Yet only ten states have statutory protections for birth control, while another four states have constitutional safeguards.
Democrats who have tried to rectify this have bumped up against the same problems as they had in the U.S. Senate. Contraceptive protections have failed to advance in narrowly divided legislatures like Arizona’s and Iowa’s. Even though Democrats narrowly control both chambers of the Virginia legislature, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the contraceptive protections they passed.
The abortion and contraception debates present interesting optics for three staunch anti-abortion Republican senators seeking re-election. Incumbent Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL), who has thrown his hat into the race to succeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Deb Fischer (R-NE) will all share the ballot with abortion initiatives this fall.
In Florida, an Emerson College April poll of 1,000 likely voters found that 42 percent of respondents supported an abortion amendment; 36 percent opposed it, while 25 percent were unsure. But the state’s initiative, which would restore the right to an abortion before viability, requires 60 percent of the vote to become law. Even if does, Florida lawmakers have a history of passing legislative obstacles that end up gutting the intent behind successful ballot questions. Scott supports a 15-week abortion ban over the six-week ban currently in force, which he has supported in the past. His presumed Democratic challenger is former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who is running on the abortion issue.
A February Saint Louis University/YouGov poll found that nearly a quarter of Republican voters in Missouri plan to support a constitutional ballot initiative that would establish broad rights to abortion, birth control, and other reproductive services. A St. Louis Public Radio analysis suggests that the amendment could pass without necessarily hurting the chances of other GOP candidates like Hawley, who will take on the presumptive Democratic challenger Lucas Kunce, a Marine Corps veteran.
Nebraska could potentially see three complex, competing abortion ballot measures: One would bestow personhood on a fetus, another would restrict abortions after the first trimester (similar to current state law), and a third would permit abortions until viability. Signature gathering must be completed by early July. Fischer will run against independent Dan Osborn, a union leader and Navy veteran who opposes what he describes as “extreme national measures to ban abortion.”
Fischer, Hawley, and Scott all opposed the Senate contraception access bill. What do Republicans support as alternatives to conventional birth control devices and medications? Project 2025, the far-right conservative blueprint for a GOP presidential transition, proposes to transition to fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning, which rely on tracking menstrual cycles and other natural physical indicators to prevent pregnancy. The plan has also proposed using Labor Department rules to restrict employer-sponsored insurance from covering abortions, something that could also extend to birth control.
Americans aren’t really ready for these possibilities, but they are effectively on the ballot in November.
